Clean Up & Move Out

The main purpose of our trip up north was for me to take an opportunity to spend an extended amount of time cleaning out my stuff from my old house in Palo Alto. I honestly did not think it was going to take long because I thought I had already cleaned out a bunch of stuff, before while I was living there and that I simply didn't have a whole lot. However, when I expressed these thoughts to my siblings they both said I had a ton of stuff left in the house. I didn't believe them until I began the endeavour.

In my closest use to be a bank of old shoe boxes that I thought belonged to my bro. I figured they were mostly his therefore, I wouldn't have to spend too much time of them. The first box I opened belonged to him. Ha ha! The second one I opened belonged to me. As did the third, fourth, fifth,...I had about eight boxes that belonged to me; filled with old letters and birthday cards dating back to my junior high days. I spent three mornings going through each and every piece of correspondence in those boxes. It was an emotional time reading the different letters from family and friends of old and people whom I've completely forgotten. After I finished reading each letter, I sadly placed them into the rubbish bin. It was sad. But practically speaking, I just couldn't hang onto all of these things and cart them around with me wherever we lived. So I had to toss them. In the end, I saved only but a handful of letters.

A Day in the City

Two weeks after Allison's surgery she had about 85% movement back in her left arm. Meaning she could almost completely bend and extend her arm without too much pain. Our orders were to continue stretching the elbow and massaging the scars to break them down faster and minimize scarring. All of these assignments could be done easily enough anywhere so we figured we'd take a trip up to Northern California to visit home, family, friends, and clear out my stuff the home of my youth.

While we were up there we took a day trip up to San Francisco. The weather was wonderful! It was in the mid-70's and blue skies with a few scattered clouds. Incredibly, the fog never rolled in that whole day and evening.

Our first stop was Twin Peaks, located in the southwest portion of the City, for a panoramic view of the City by the Bay. And we were rewarded with this scene:



After admiring the City from above we headed down the hill into Golden Gate Park. At first, I just wanted to drive through Golden Gate Park because it's a beautiful place but we happened to drive by the Japanese Tea Garden and we decided to stop and check it out. It was well worth the stop as the garden was quite large, well kept and hosted a variety of different plants and flowers.

In keeping with Allison's quest to find Monet's in every city she visits, we tracked more of the famous French painter's works at the Legion of Honor. For one thing, the Legion of Honor is magnificent piece of architecture, a re-creation of an eighteenth-century French palace located on the left bank of the Seine. Housed within its walls are various works of arts ranging from sculptures, paintings, to a ceiling imported from the Middle East. If you're a lover of art, we highly recommend the Legion of Honor.

For lunch, we stopped at Japantown and were very disappointed with the quality of food that we found. That's when we realized that we already live close by to another Japantown: Gardena, where we could get great Japanese food! Gardena is home to many different generations of Japanese and Japanese-Americans. The city is adjacent to Torrance, site of Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda and staffed by Japanese nationals. Gardena is also home to second, third and fourth generation Japanese-Americans. As a result, there are many Japanese grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses that cater to the relatively large albeit dwindling numbers of Japanese.

That evening we had dinner with my cousin, Andy and our friends Simon & Jenny. We ate Chinese food in Chinatown and walked a few blocks to North Beach and enjoyed desserts and coffee. It was a wonderful day spent in a wonderful City with wonderful people.

First Harvest

I'm a gardener now!

Allison's Surgery & Post-Op

Allison successfully underwent her elbow surgery. The whole procedure went quite well and quickly but she was required to stay the night in the hospital for observation because she received general anesthesia. I bought Chinese food for dinner for Allison, myself and mom and we spent the evening with her in her hospital room. It was fun a evening of hanging out together. The evening didn't seem any different from our usual evenings together at home except we were spending it in the hospital and Allison had just undergone surgery.

The next morning, Allison came home and spent a week in the massive cast you can see in the picture. It was quite heavy (about 5 lbs.) and uncomfortable on her. Thankfully, it came off one week later at the physical therapist's office, at which time she gave us instructions on how to begin rehab and strengthening of the arm.

With Allison's recovery from the surgery came six weeks of disability leave from her work. Simultaneously, I was on summer break from school so we decided we might as well take the time off to do a little traveling to the Bay Area and San Diego to visit family, friends and to clear out my stuff from my old home in Palo Alto.